November 7, 2016

What's on TV? Tuesday, November 10, 1964

This week we return to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but it's a slightly different look that those we've seen in the past. Unlike those issues from the '50s, by 1964 we've got more stations to choose from, including KERA, the area's first educational channel. In addition to DFW, we've got a full compliment of stations from the Wichita Falls area, as well as KXII in Ardmore-Sherman-Dennison. In case you hadn't noticed, the letters XII are also the Roman numerals for 12, as in Channel 12. Yes, you probably had noticed.

I've always associated The Bell Telephone Hour, NBC's great music series, with another musical program of the time, Voice of Firestone. Both are identified with classical music, but as you can see in this tribute to the late Oscar Hammerstein II, who had died four years before, both programs could also veer into popular music. One thing I didn't know until a few years ago: every episode of Bell Telephone Hour, which ran from 1959 to 1968, was done in color.

The Doctors and the Nurses began life as The Nurses, but added a couple of docs for the second season, and changed the title accordingly. Evidentelly, there's only so much drama you can wring out of a medical series in which the title characters can neither diagnose nor proscribe treatment.

Darryl Hickman's having a busy week, isn't he? Not only is he on You Don't Say! with singer Joanie Sommers, he's also appearing on ABC's Missing Links with Tom Poston and Barbara Feldon. Since they're on different networks, it's fortunate for Hickman that the shows aren't on at the same time.

The documentary series World War I, narrated by Robert Ryan (and available on DVD), is, like ABC's similar documentary series on Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the kind of series that could still appear as prime time network programming in the early '60s. Before we get too wrapped up in nostalgia though, it's good to note that even then, series like these weren't ratings winners. As far as we can tell, documentaries seldom have been.

Not sure if Science Fiction, the 5:00 p.m. program, is actually Science Fiction Theater. My guess is that it is, but in the interests of accuracy (as well as the shortness of research time), I won't take a chance on something I can't confirm.

Operation LIFT, the first show of WFAA's broadcast day, stands for Literacy Instruction For Texas. It was started by the Greater Dallas Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, and you can read more about this project - which was still an ongoing concern as of 2008 - in this article.

The Restless Gun (4:00 p.m.), stars John Payne as Vint Bonner, and ran in first-run on NBC from 1957 to 1959. It's based on a 1953 radio series called The Six Shooter, which starred Jimmy Stewart. A few tweaks, such as a change in the lead character's name, and voila! a new TV series.

KERA, Channel 13 (Dallas) (Educ.)

Morning

09:00a

Science Lab I

09:15a

Spanish 2A

09:30a

Adventures in Learning

10:00a

The Friendly Giant

10:15a

Sing Hi, Sing Lo

10:30a

What’s New

11:00a

Home Room I

11:15a

Spanish 2A

11:30a

Home and Family Life

Afternoon

12:00p

Portugal Today (special)

01:00p

Home Room I

01:15p

Spanish 1A

01:30p

Flight Six

01:45p

Spanish 3A

02:00p

Around the World

02:30p

Science Lab I

02:45p

Spanish 2A

03:00p

Spanish 3A

03:15p

Industry on Parade

04:00p

Classsroom 400

04:30p

Pathfinder

05:00p

What’s New

05:30p

Sing Hi – Sing Lo

05:45p

The Friendly Giant

Evening

06:00p

Around the World

06:30p

What’s New

07:00p

Driver Education

07:30p

Here’s Texas

07:45p

Live and Learn

08:00p

Your Health

08:30p

Challenge

09:00p

The Computer

09:30p

Virus

With its emphasis on classroom programming, KERA looks like most other educational channels of the time. In my opinion - but then, you probably already know what my opinion is.

- Missing Links taped in New York City.You Don't Say taped in Hollywood.Which means Darryl Hickman had one spectacular commute that week. ... unless, of course, you're aware that the two shows taped blocks-of-five on different days, perhaps weeks apart - you know, like everybody was doing by that time ...

- The Doctors And The Nurses was in its third season in the fall of '64.The change was a Hail Mary, when CBS moved the show against The Fugitive, which was just breaking big at that point.Anyway, D&N was another "anthology in disguise", in which the disease of the week was a McGuffin (most of the doctor shows from this period fit this description).

- Get The Message has an interesting guest this week: Frank Buxton, who up until a month or so ago had been the show's MC.Buxton left GTM to concentrate on his own independent productions, and was replaced by Robert Q. Lewis. I'm guessing that there might have been gossip, so Buxton came on as a celebrity player to scuttle same.Anyway, Frank Buxton did pretty well for himself as a writer/producer/director of TV comedy, most often in service of Garry Marshall.

- The Human Jungle did reasonably well in US syndication this season.Here in Chicago, WGN-ch9 carried it in prime time for its single first-run season, then picked it up for a cycle or so of reruns in daytime.Some say that casting Herbert Lom as the lead might have been a miscalculation, given his typecast as an exotic villain.This, of course, predated the Pink Panther movies, which turned Lom into a crazed comic foil (and not just for Peter Sellers) - but nobody knew that then, did they?

- Chicago note:You may have noticed that the noon-1:30 time slot on the ABC stations is usually occupied by local programming. The ABC network let the affiliates have this period.Here in Chicago, Channel 7 ran movies in the slot, mainly from the big RKO purchase of a decade before.I'm guessing that the other ABC-owned stations did the same.

Oh, one other thing - you're correct that this is the third season for "The Doctors and the Nurses." However, I didn't say that this was a third-season episode; I merely noted that the show had changed its title in the second season (unless the always-reliable Wikipedia has let us down), not to suggest that this was the second season.

The Title change to The Doctors And The Nurses happened in the third season, '64-'65.The Nurses started in the fall of '61, with that title, and continued as a Thursday night feature for two seasons.The Doctors were conscripted into the title when the show moved to Tuesdays in the fall of '64. The foregoing comes from my old TV Guides and my reference books; I only use Wikipedia as a last resort, and I've been burned a few times as a result.So There Too.